Business

Q&A: Professional Cabinet Solutions streamlines and expands

Eric VanDerHeyden, president and general manager of Professional Cabinet Solutions in Mira Loma, is implementing a survival strategy of cutting costs, streamlining and expanding the cabinet manufacturer’s market beyond Southern California

It might have been fatal for Mira Loma-based RSI Professional Cabinet Solutions in the wake of the housing crash when sales plummeted for the Southern California homebuilders who were its customers.

But the president and general manager of the manufacturer, Eric VanDerHeyden, with the guidance of Ron Simon, the companyâs Newport Beach entrepreneur owner, crafted a winning survival strategy.

After the housing market tanked in 2008, VanDerHeyden, 50, took painful cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and price cuts for PCS cabinets.

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Then he set the stage for future growth by developing a dealer and distribution network that could expand sales of PCS cabinets beyond Southern California to builders in other states and to homeowners who want to remodel their kitchens and bathrooms.

It helped that homebuilders who favored ever more expensive and fancy cabinets at the peak of the housing boom had become price sensitive. The PCS sales pitch â" that it offers fashionable European-style cabinets with frameless doors at a lower price than its competitors â" has increased the companyâs market share. So has the shutdown of other cabinet manufacturers.

VanDerHeyden said PCSâ market share in Southern California grew from 7 percent in 2005 to about 30 percent today. In addition, the company sells in 11 western states and plans gradually to open factories and sales nationwide.

Even when homebuilding revives, VanDerHeyden said streamlining the manufacturing process and cost saving will continue to be part of the company culture. Improving efficiency is one of his major objectives as he walks the factory floor and hunts everywhere for ideas to save time and money.

Q: What is your strength as a manager?

A: I am very good with numbers. Probably more important, I try very hard to understand what peopleâs strengths are and to find ways to make the most of those strengths. I also look for ways to shore up peopleâs weaknesses. Nobodyâs perfect.

Q: In your position as president, what is the most important thing you do?

A: The most important thing is to be able to communicate our strategy, to understand when there are conflicts with that strategy, whether it involves resources or timing or setting priorities, and to try to help people resolve the conflicts that come up.

Q: What is the strategy you are trying to communicate?

A: We want to be the value leader in frameless European-style cabinets across the country, and we want to find ways to continually lower our cost of doing business and pass the savings to our customers.

Q: Where do you get ideas for improving factory efficiency?

A: There is inspiration all over the place. There are ideas that come from people inside the factory, ideas that come from talking to our customers and ideas that come from outside the industry, in newspapers and universities.

Q: Do you work on finding promising ideas?

A: I am an idea generator. I drive my staff crazy with ideas. Sometimes it is as easy as asking them to try something out, and sometimes the proposal is more complex and needs analysis. We have a logo here called âVICO,â which means âvalue in and cost out.â It is kind of our internal moniker for pursuing propositions that could save us money and bring more value to our customers.

Q: What would be an example of a change you made?

A: We just redesigned a product that our customers found frustrating. It was a kit product that our installers were having trouble with. We put ourselves in their shoes and had the same difficulty. So we brainstormed and came up with a new kit that takes 10 minutes instead of 45 minutes to put together.

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